The kind of art urban design is

Abstract

Advancing the art of urban design invites scrutiny of ‘the kind of art urban design is’. Accordingly, this paper first discusses urban design as art, then uses Fokt’s framework for defining art and Lalo’s classification of arts to suggest fresh interpretations of urban design as an art. The paper then relates urban design to other arts, drawing attention to urban design’s affinity with architecture, landscape architecture, interior and garden design. The paper suggests that urban design can be richer for being an art, without neglecting the possibility for it to be functional or participatory. Advancing urban design as an art implies attention towards suitable means of distilling and instilling collective urban meaning.

Notes

1. “Art has always fascinated the makers of definitions, and has always baffled them” (Newton 1945, 10). Art has been described as “a particularly vague concept” whose boundaries are not well defined (Bourassa 1991, 11). Fokt invites scepticism about the ability to define art (2012, 300). Dean suggests that the search for definitions may be misguided (2003, 33); and reports Weiss’ contention that art “cannot be delimited in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions”. Tolhurst (1984, 266) draws attention to borderline cases (between what is art and what is not). The elusive nature of art also features in contemporary popular representations (Sewell 2013; Grayson Perry’s 2013 Reith Lecture ‘Beating the Bounds’ on the boundaries of art, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03dsk4d; ‘Almost Art’, http://www.almost-art.org/; Bevan 2015).

2. From the earlier suggested definition of design, and the interpretations of art discussed here, it is clear that art does not necessarily imply design, or vice versa.

3. Fokt is scrutinizing to what extent pornography could be considered an art. Fokt concludes that pornography can be considered art, else “all of the currently most seriously treated definitions” are wrong (2012).

4. While Lalo’s classification is over 60 years old and can hardly be considered a widely cited authority, it has the benefit of being systematic, and in principle can contain or be elaborated to contain any art, not simply by arbitrary addition of categories, but by placement within a structured system. One does not need to accept each particular categorical placement to appreciate the systematic basis for organization.

5. Scenography is almost a kindred art, but ultimately treated here as distinct from urban design due to the context of a staged play, a setting for actors as distinct from an audience, as opposed to a public realm landscape. There are also obvious links between scenography and architecture (Howard 2009, 2) or architectural space (Oddey and White 2006, 18). Interestingly, according to Aronson, the scenic element of theatre has been misunderstood or underrated due to being equated with “painting or other plastic arts and understood … as a (corrupt) subset of (pure) visual art” (Aronson 2005, 5).

6. It may also be the ‘model’ for an actual work of sculpture, by Yutaka Sone; http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/eiffel-tower-big-ben-and-the-harbor-freeway/).

7. It is remarked that the architect Elliot’s open colonnade accords with the engineer Stevenson’s desire for “retaining the spectacular views of the city and beyond.” (http://hsewsf.sedsh.gov.uk/hslive/hsstart?P_HBNUM=27,945) Indeed, this reference to views links the composition to landscape architecture.

8. Interior design can also be interpreted as overlapping with garden design, in interior garden or landscape design (Falkenberg 2011).

9. This is not to deny that furniture, sculpture and painting can serve to ‘create place’ for human occupation, but it is convenient here to draw the line at art forms that people occupy bodily. Of course, there are exceptions ‒ one may occupy a chair or bed or climb inside a Henry Moore sculpture for that matter. As ever with art, boundaries are likely to be blurred, as furniture may blend with architecture in ‘furnitecture’ (Yudina 2015).

10. While the first core sense of the art of urban design is considered kindred with the arts of architecture and landscape architecture, the interpretation of informal urbanism as a kind of art of urban design might better be interpreted as a proximate art, like participatory art; similarly, certain kinds of design of the built environment could be considered as proximate arts, via ‘artful design’. Indeed, this implies that there could be more of a variation between these alternative interpretations of the art of urban design than between urban design in its core sense and architecture or landscape design. To confirm this more firmly, we would need a more detailed examination of a range of particular cases of urban design, as there is likely to be degrees of similarity and difference, as one kind blends into another in different cases on the ground.